Assassin’s Creed in-game Black Friday ad sparks outrage from Xbox players

Update:
In a statement given to The Verge, Ubisoft claims the ads were a technical error.

“We have been made aware that some players encountered pop-up ads while playing certain Assassin’s Creed titles yesterday,” Ubisoft spokesperson Fabien Darrigues said. “This was the result of a technical error that we addressed as soon as we learned of the issue.”

Original story:
While it’s not uncommon to see ads for store items in Assassin’s Creed titles when first loading into the main menu, Ubisoft now appears to be taking it a step further by placing big in-game ads for Assassin’s Creed Mirage when players try to load up the map in Odyssey.

As you can see in the video below, Reddit user triddel24 came across the Black Friday ad for Assassin’s Creed Mirage while entering the map menu screen in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. This has reportedly been seen by both Xbox and PlayStation users over the past few days.

Just got an in-game advertisement when I tried to go to the map
byu/triddell24 inxboxone

Of course, this has not gone down well with folk on the Xbox One subreddit. There are loads of comments from angry players who are calling the move “gross” and “100% unacceptable,” while others are worried that this could be the future for Ubisoft games.

If Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a free-to-play title, this could maybe almost be forgiven, considering Ubisoft wouldn’t be charging for access, but as Odyssey was a full, premium release, seeing ads in the middle of the game like this feels somewhat greedy.

We have yet to see the ad in other Assassin’s Creed games. Some are reportedly seeing it in Origins, though we haven’t been able to verify this. Have you come across any on your travels? Let us know down in the comments.

In other Assassin’s Creed news, Mirage will soon be getting a permadeath mode and New Game+ in a free update.